No Headlights

[Paul Schwalen]

The headlights on my 03 Contessa will not come on.  I don't drive much after dark and just discovered this yesterday before sunup when they would not come on at all. They both showed a slight illumination but essentially they were useless. I know the ignition switch has to be on but I still get no headlights.  I checked the voltage at the circuit breaker in the panel below the drivers window and the voltage across the headlight breaker shows 12.5 V, however when I ck the voltage at the TB-1 buss bar the voltage shows 5V at the headlight connection.

Could I have a faulty headlight switch at the dash?    In the past the headlights have not been what I would call 'bright' but at least I could see where I was going, now nothing.  Any ideas?

[Steve Huber]

Paul,
Sounds like a bad hdlight or dimmer switch, but check to be sure the connections on the TB are tight. I'll email you the headlight fix that will give you better brightness 9after you get them working again.
Steve

[Edward Buker]

Paul,

I think you may have a faulty headlight breaker. They use a thermal breaker and when it is closed and conducting there should be 0 to maybe .1 V across it. You can take a piece of wire and momentarily jumper the breaker and see if your headlights come on. If that does not work check that you have good ground connections at the headlights especially if both high and low beams are affected. Wherever the headlight ground wires are connected to ground and at the headlights themselves.

Later Ed

[Paul Schwalen]

Thanks Steve and Ed.  I plan to check out the breaker and switch today.  Will post results.

Paul

[Paul Schwalen]

Well I think I have found the problem, at least I hope so.  I have attached a photo of the VIP control box and the wiring connections to it. You can clearly see a burned wire entering the J12 harness.  According to the firewall harness diagram J12 harness, and I think the burned wire, is labeled VIP ECU HEADLIGHTS OUT.

A complication that has come up in that the J12 harness must have 'welded' itself to the rear half of the connection when the burn occurred  and I am afraid to apply too much pressure on the outer end.  Any suggestions about how I can get the connection to release from its rear half?  I hope to cut the wire back and re install it in the harness so I need to get it removed.

Thanks in advance,

Paul

[Edward Buker]

Paul,

Is the cover on the smart wheel controller able to come off? If so take a look behind it and see how the other end of the connector is bedded. I think I see that they are on a circuit board in the photo. If it is a pin on a board then you will need to be careful not to break the board. Given the heat that was involved you should inspect the connector on the inboard side if you can also.

Start by pulling all the other white connectors around the bad one to get a sense of the normal pull/pry tension. That will let you try to pull or pry and not use excessive force on the bad one. If it releases then good, if not see if there is an accessible point where a new wire can be soldered to the board or pin. You can then use some form of male and female pin or spade crimp connector to bypass the plug for that one wire.

There seems to be excessive current or some resistance in the connection causing this issue. I would only use this wire as a trigger for a relay and do the Roy Mueller modification for your headlights. That mod is posted as a link in the technical support area of the BAC website.

If this is not repairable without destroying it I would cut that wire several inches back from the plug and measure the voltage on it while triggering a relay coil with it to test if the current path is still sufficient to supply a relay coil with around 12V. If so I would do the headlight relay mod and use it as is. If the voltage drop triggering a relay coil is excessive then it will have to be bypassed or replaced. There is some small hope that if you called the manufacturer and they have had this issue they may have some solution or help with this. Hope this helps.

Later Ed

[Paul Schwalen]

Ed thanks for the input.  It is raining here now so I will have to wait till tomorrow to see if the cover is removable.  I did remove the adjacent connections to compare the force to remove them and they came off easily so this one is 'welded' to its mate.  I don't quite understand what you mean by soldering a new wire to the board. Does the Roy Mueller modification bypass this connection to the VIP panel?  I think this is getting beyond my pay grade here.  

I will try the above tomorrow and or call the manuf and report back.  In the meantime there are no plans to drive the Beaver at night in the foreseeable future.  

Thanks,

Paul

[Edward Buker]

Paul,
Sometimes when a situation like yours occurs and the connection pin is no longer an acceptable contact to handle the current involved then one method of repair is to go upstream of the pin for a connection point and bed a soldered wire. That could be right where the pin to the board is soldered or further up the land pattern where the next solder point is. You would take that new bedded wire and by pass the connector by cutting the wire off of the connector and use a pluggable crimp connector (male and female) to bypass the bad plug. This takes a little solder skill not to damage the board land and not apply too much heat. This does not mean you have to do it if you are not comfortable with that, these are just alternatives that could fix your problem.

Roy's modification would not bypass that plug but it vastly reduces the current flow required of the connector wire by no longer directly supplying the headlight load. You would only now power a relay coil and use that relay to turn on the headlights. Where that bad contact and wire would have had to supply maybe 16 to 20 amps to the headlights directly, they would only have to supply .1 amps or so to energize the coil so that the magnetic forces close contacts that can carry the heavy headlight load. What you have now is a resistive contact point that is getting hot due to the heavy load and most of the voltage drop is happening at that contact rather than at the headlights. By reducing the load you are no longer dropping the voltage in that resistive contact point and you may find that the contact, as bad as it looks, may be acceptable in this type of application. Once you try the relay coil as a connection and measure the voltage coming from that connector to the relay coil you would have a good idea if this would work fine. One of the relay coil connections would go to this wire and one would go to ground. You would measure the voltage across the relay coil connections and if they approximate 12V you should be fine.

My assumption in all this is that the damaged connector that has been badly heated wire is the voltage drop culprit causing your headlight problem. If this is beyond your skill level and comfort zone then get some help with this. Your coach would benefit from Roy's wiring changes to reduce the switched loads to these components and eliminate a lot of the voltage drop....it is just a better way to go.

Later Ed

[Paul Schwalen]

Ed - just to bring things up to date.  Today I managed to release the 'welded' connection and have posted some pics of the mess. As you can see it is pretty bad.  After that I went online to VIP and found some tests for the headlight part of the smart wheel.  All the tests I did pertaining to the headlights indicate that the board is OK!

I called VIP and got a really helpful tech that thinks that I should change out the board ($178 + shipping) even though the tests were OK because he feels the high load put on by the headlights will cause a repeat of the problem. He said I should also do the Roy Mueller relay conversion. I asked him about cutting the headlight flash ability out of the VIP and he said it is easy to do by removing the #6 wire from the J11 and connecting that to the Roy conversion (I think he meant the power in but not sure).

He told me where to purchase the burned connector/pins which I have on order. I like your idea to do the Roy conversion and then with the very low amp input it may fly especially if I have repaired at least the outer half of the connection. My plan is to do that and see what happens.  I will post the results next week when I am done.

Thanks again for you help.

Regards,

Paul

[Steve Huber]

Paul,
Your approach sounds good. Be sure to scrape between the pin connections on the backside of thh board as it looks like there may be a conduction path there.
Steve

[Edward Buker]

Paul,

You might also ask VIP if you can buy the connector with the pins that are on the board side. If so that could be unsoldered and changed out relatively easily. You would have new contact pins and with the Roy Mueller mod you would be good to go. If you could not get that connector I would consider removing the pins and plug on the board and soldering jumper wires directly to the board. There are round pin male and female crimp connectors that could be used on the 4 wires. You would solder a 4-6 inch piece of wire to the board that has one of the crimp connectors on the other end and connect it to the proper wire cut from the white female connector and crimped with the proper mating crimp connector. You would repeat this change for all 4 wires. You would need to label each of the wires to maintain proper identity. If you think that you want to try and do this I could tell you the proper procedure to unsolder those pins. The advantage of this is that there are no questionable connections to worry about.

You could try and file the damaged board pins slightly and see if you can get them back to a metal surface but if you remove much of the plating or some of the metal you are creating another poor contact, so if you go this way be a minimalist. Keep us posted.

Later Ed

[Joel Ashley]

I defer to my more electronically inclined friends, but regardless of the tests you did I don't like the look of that burned board.  Components on it may have been damaged but haven't quite expired yet.  If I was replacing connectors and relaying the headlights, I'd go the whole 9 yards and replace the board.

It looks like the short may have been between those two wires where they entered the connector.  Maybe a sloppy assembler left stray wires at the entry point, some conductive debris fell into just the right place, or maybe water?  I hate the position of my VIP module in that bay;  it used to fill with water leaking inside the cap from the windshield, and that module sits nearly at floor level in there.  Fortunately, after 6 years, I've finally stopped the offending leak with Lexel, knock on wood (or fiberglass).

Joel

[Bill Sprague]

Since the VIP circuit only allows steering wheel controlled light flashes for lane changes, is it necessary?  I say that because current wisdom in the trucking world seems to be that to suggest when it is "OK" is also suggesting the acceptance of "liability".  In other words, when was the last time the driver for a major carrier flashed their headlights when you were clear?

Would connecting the two wires in the picture restore normal headlight function?

[Edward Buker]

My guess is that there was some oxidation on the pins and that could possibly also be coupled with some newer headlight bulbs that pull more current as things changed over the years. The contacts of the pins heated up due to contact resistance with high current flow and began to deteriorate the pins further until they finally overheated and failed. If Roy's modification is done and the need for high current handling is eliminated then I do not see an issue with long term reliability here if the bad pins are fixed or bypassed in some way. There were no components beyond a relay contact that were involved based on the view of board patterns and what was mounted to them.

If one wire feeds voltage in and they just go through a relay and back out again, so the headlights can be interrupted or supplied to blink the lights, then there are options to bypass this function as Bill points out. I am not sure if you can just connect them without seeing a schematic, VIP may be able to advise. Hope we are not confusing you with options here, just trying to sort out what is possible and advisable given your problem set.

Later Ed

[Paul Schwalen]

Thanks to all!  I have just completed the Roy Mod and after plugging in the J12 connector I at first got no headlights but after slightly squeezing the female pins in the ruined connector into a slight oval configuration this was enough to cause the current to pass through and I now have headlights!

Ed was correct when he predicted that the reduced current flow through the damaged pins may allow the current to pass through.  I still have to change out the J12 connector which is in the mail from Digi-Key but in the meantime I am once again a happy camper!

Bill - I also feel that flashing a vehicle when it is OK to pull back in your lane could lead to issues.  However I still sometimes do it, especially when the trucker and I have been passing each other (usually I pass going up the hill and they pass going down) and he/she has flashed me, so I will respond in kind. The tech at VIP told me to cut the #6 wire from the J11 connector to the board and this will stop any flashing of the headlights.  I am not sure where one would have to connect that severed wire to.

So I plan to live with the damaged J12 connector as long as it continues to function correctly, however if this problem returns I will either get some advice from Ed and change the connector that attaches to the board (I looked closely and it seems that un-soldering 4 pins on the rear of the board and resoldering the new connector in place may do the job) or spend the $s and change the board.

Paul